The brain controls many aspects of thinking—remembering, planning and organizing, making decisions, and much more. Some changes in thinking are common as people get older. For example, older adults may have:

Increased difficulty finding words and recalling names

More problems with multi-tasking

Mild decreases in the ability to pay attention:

Aging may also bring positive cognitive changes. People often have more knowledge and insight from a lifetime of experiences. Research shows that older adults can still:

Learn new things

Create new memories

Improve vocabulary and language skills

The Older, Healthy Brain

As a person gets older, changes occur in all parts of the body, including the brain.

Certain parts of the brain shrink, especially those important to learning and other complex mental activities.

In certain brain regions, communication between neurons (nerve cells) can be reduced.

Blood flow in the brain may also decrease.

Inflammation, which occurs when the body responds to an injury or disease, may increase.

These changes in the brain can affect mental function, even in healthy older people. For example, some older adults find that they don’t do as well as younger people on complex memory or learning tests. Given enough time, though, they can do as well. There is growing evidence that the brain remains “plastic”—able to adapt to new challenges and tasks—as people age.

It is not clear why some people think well as they get older while others do not. One possible reason is “cognitive reserve,” the brain’s ability to work well even when some part of it is disrupted. People with more education seem to have more cognitive reserve than others.

Some brain changes, like those associated with Alzheimer’s disease, are NOT a normal part of aging. Talk with your healthcare provider if you are concerned.

Brain Regions

The brain is complex and has many specialized parts. For example, the two halves of the brain, called cerebral hemispheres, are responsible for intelligence.

The cerebral hemispheres have an outer layer called the cerebral cortex. This region, the brain’s “gray matter,” is where the brain processes sensory information, such as what we see and hear. The cerebral cortex also controls movement and regulates functions such as thinking, learning, and remembering.

For more information about parts of the brain, see “Know Your Brain” from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health:

The healthy human brain contains many different types of cells. Neurons are nerve cells that process and send information throughout the brain, and from the brain to the muscles and organs of the body.

The ability of neurons to function and survive depends on three important processes:

Communication. When a neuron receives signals from other neurons, it generates an electrical charge. This charge travels to the synapse, a tiny gap where chemicals called neurotransmitters are released and move across to another neuron.

Metabolism. This process involves all chemical reactions that take place in a cell to support its survival and function. These reactions require oxygen and glucose, which are carried in blood flowing through the brain.

Repair, remodeling, and regeneration. Neurons live a long time—more than 100 years in humans. As a result, they must constantly maintain and repair themselves. In addition, some brain regions continue to make new neurons.

Other types of brain cells, called glial cells, play critical roles in supporting neurons. In addition, the brain has an enormous network of blood vessels. Although the brain is only 2 percent of the body’s weight, it receives 20 percent of the body’s blood supply.

Science shows yoga may protect your brain in old age

Twenty-one female hatha yoga practitioners who practiced at least twice a week for a minimum of 8 years, were recruited from hatha yoga studios in São Paulo, Brazil. Hatha Yoga, one of the most common yoga branches in the West, is based on asana (postures), pranayama (breathing exercise) and dhyana (meditation). We also recruited an additional group of 21 women who were naive to yoga, meditation or any mind-body intervention and were matched to the first group in age, years of formal education and level of physical activity. Subjects were matched for physical activity based on the practices of the Yoga group—those who did not practice any activity other than yoga were matched to sedentary controls and those who practiced yoga plus another physical activity were matched to a control group member who practiced the same or equivalent physical activity. Inclusion criteria were: at least 60 years of age, female, right-handed and having completed at least elementary school. We chose to include only women to add an element of homogeneity to the group. Interestingly, it was also easier to identify female yoga practitioners than male practitioners. Exclusion criteria were: substance abuse; tremor or dystonia of the head; chronic physical or other health problems that prevented them from performing their daily activities independently; any contraindication to MRI; a clinical history of neurological and/or psychiatric diseases. All volunteers provided written informed consent and the study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein (CAAE 22313813.7.0000.0071).

In conclusion, healthy elderly women who practiced hatha yoga for at least 8 years had greater prefrontal CT than a group of matched controls. This CT may be associated with cognitive preservation.

Pregnancy causes lasting changes in a woman’s brain

Pregnancy changes a woman’s brain, altering the size and structure of areas involved in perceiving the feelings and perspectives of others. Most of these changes remained two years after giving birth, at least into the babies’ toddler years. And the more pronounced the brain changes, the higher mothers scored on a measure of emotional attachment to their babies.

“Just fascinating,” said Dr. Ronald E. Dahl, director of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. He said the researchers’ interpretation that changes in the brain enhance women’s maternal responses is “provocative, and I think it’s likely to be true.”

Researchers scanned the brains of women who had never conceived before, and again after they gave birth for the first time. The results were remarkable: loss of gray matter in several brain areas involved in a process called social cognition or “theory of mind,” the ability to register and consider how other people perceive things.

What might the loss mean?

There are three possibilities, said Paul Thompson, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California who was not involved in the study. “The most intuitive is that losing gray matter is not beneficial, that later on there may be negative consequences.”

Or, he said, it could be just a “neutral” reflection of pregnancy-related “stress, diet, lack of sleep.”

A third possibility is that the loss is “part of the brain’s program for dealing with the future,” he said. Hormone surges in pregnancy might cause “pruning or cellular adaptation that is helpful,” he said, streamlining certain brain areas to be more efficient at mothering skills “from nurturing to extra vigilance to teaching.”

The study strongly leans toward the third possibility.

“We certainly don’t want to put a message out there on the lines of ‘pregnancy makes you lose your brain,’ as we don’t believe this is the case,” said Elseline Hoekzema, a researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who led the study at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona in Spain.

“Gray matter volume loss does not necessarily represent a bad thing,” she said. “It can also represent a beneficial process of maturation or specialization.”

Pregnancy, she explained, may help a woman’s brain specialize in “a mother’s ability to recognize the needs of her infant, to recognize social threats or to promote mother-infant bonding.”

Teen tantrums

Adolescents are in the midst of acquiring incredible new skills sets, especially when it comes to social behavior and abstract thought. But they are not good at using them yet, so they must experiment — and sometimes they use their parents as guinea pigs. Many kids this age view conflict as a type of self-expression and may have trouble focusing on an abstract idea or understanding another’s point of view.

Just as when dealing with the tantrums of toddlerhood, parents need to remember their teen’s behavior is “not a personal affront,” Johnson said.

They are dealing with a huge amount of social, emotional and cognitive flux and have underdeveloped abilities to cope. They need their parents — those people with the more stable adult brain — to help them by staying calm, listening and being good role models, Feinstein told LiveScience.

And be advised: The more you yell at a teen, the worse they’ll likely behave, according to a 2013 study published in the journal Child Development.

Intense emotions

Puberty is the beginning of major changes in the limbic system,” Johnson said, referring to the part of the brain that not only helps regulate heart rate and blood sugar levels, but also is critical to the formation of memories and emotions.

Part of the limbic system, the amygdala is thought to connect sensory information to emotional responses. Its development, along with hormonal changes, may give rise to newly intense experiences of rage, fear, aggression (including towards oneself), excitement and sexual attraction.

Over the course of adolescence, the limbic system comes under greater control of the prefrontal cortex, the area just behind the forehead, which is associated with planning, impulse control and higher order thought.

As additional areas of the brain start to help process emotion, older teens gain some equilibrium and have an easier time interpreting others. But until then, they often misread teachers and parents, Feinstein said.

“You can be as careful as possible and you still will have tears or anger at times because they will have misunderstood what you have said,” she said.

Peer pleasure

As Teens become better at thinking abstractly, their social anxiety increases, according to research in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published in 2004.

Abstract reasoning makes it possible to consider yourself from the eyes of another. Teens may use this new skill to ruminate about what others are thinking of them. In particular, peer approval has been shown to be highly rewarding to the teen brain, Johnson said, which may be why teens are more likely to take risks when other teens are around.

“Kids are really concerned with looking cool — but you don’t need brain research to tell you that,” she said.

Friends also provide teens with opportunities to learn skills such as negotiating, compromise and group planning. “They are practicing adult social skills in a safe setting and they are really not good at it at first,” Feinstein said. So even if all they do is sit around with their friends, teens are hard at work acquiring important life skills.

Measuring risk

The brakes come online somewhat later than the accelerator of the brain,” said Johnson, referring to the development of the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system respectively. At the same time, “teens need higher doses of risk to feel the same amount of rush adults do,” Johnson said.

Teenage brains are simply wired to seek reward, a study in 2014 showed. When teens got money, or anticipated receiving some, the part of their brain that deals with pleasure and reward, the ventral striatum, lit up more than in adults in the study.

All this may make teens vulnerable to engaging in risky behaviors, such as trying drugs, getting into fights or jumping into unsafe water. By late adolescence, say 17 years old and after, the part of the brain responsible for impulse control and long-term perspective taking is thought to help them reign in some of the behavior they were tempted by in middle adolescence, according to McNeely and Blanchard. [Why Teens Do Stupid Things.]

What is a parent to do in the meantime? “Continue to parent your child.” Johnson said. Like all children, “teens have specific developmental vulnerabilities and they need parents to limit their behavior,” she said.

Parents are still important

According to o Feinstein, a survey of teenagers revealed that 84 percent think highly of their mothers and 89 percent think highly of their fathers. And more than three-quarters of teenagers enjoy spending time with their parents; 79 percent enjoy hanging out with Mom and 76 percent like chilling with Dad.

One of the tasks of adolescence is separating from the family and establishing some autonomy, Feinstein said, but that does not mean a teen no longer needs parents — even if they say otherwise.

“They still need some structure and are looking to their parents to provide that structure,” she said. “The parent that decides to treat a 16 or 17 year old as an adult is behaving unfairly and setting them up for failure.”

One of the most influential ways to parent your teen, in addition to being a good listener, is to be a good role model, especially when dealing with stress and other life difficulties, as teens are actively trying to figure out their own coping strategies.

“Your adolescent is watching you,” Feinstein said.

Research on the different rates of brain function development during adolescence was published in the journal Developmental Review in 2008.

Need more zzzzzzzsleep

It is a myth that teens need less sleep than young children. They need 9 to 10 hours a night, scientists say, although most fall short.

Research in 2015 found teens get substantially less sleep now compared with two decades ago.

Part of the problem is a shift in circadian rhythms during adolescence: It makes sense to teen bodies to get up later and stay up later, Johnson said. But due to early bussing and class schedules, many teens rack up sleep debt and “become increasingly cognitively impaired across the week,” Johnson said. Sleep-deprivation only exacerbates moodiness and cloudy decision-making. And sleep is thought to aid the critical reorganization of the teen brain.

“There is a disconnect between teen bodies and our schedules,” Johnson said.

Making matters worse, screen time in general and social media use in particular are cutting into teen sleep hours, putting them at greater risk for anxiety and depression, according to a study presented Sept. 11, 2015 at the annual conference of the BPS Developmental and Social Psychology Section in England.

Lastly, about that “I’m the center of the universe!” thing.

I am the center of the universe — and this universe is not good enough!

The hormone changes at puberty have huge affects on the brain, one of which is to spur the production of more receptors for oxytocin, according to a 2008 issue of the journal Developmental Review.

While oxytocin is often described as the “bonding hormone,” increased sensitivity to its effects in the limbic system has also been linked to feeling self-consciousness, making an adolescent truly feel like everyone is watching him or her. According to McNeely and Blanchard, these feelings peak around 15 years old.

While this may make a teen seem self-centered (and in their defense, they do have a lot going on), the changes in the teen brain may also spur some of the more idealistic efforts tackled by young people throughout history.

“It is the first time they are seeing themselves in the world,” Johnson said, meaning their greater autonomy has opened their eyes to what lies beyond their families and schools. They are asking themselves, she continued, for perhaps the first time: What kind of person do I want to be and what type of place do I want the world to be?

Until their brains develop enough to handle shades of grey, their answers to these questions can be quite one-sided, Feinstein said, but the parents’ job is to help them explore the questions, rather than give them answers.

We’ll leave you with this thought, comforting or not: “Teenagers could do stupid things in response to a situation not because they are stupid, but because their brains are working differently,” said says brain researcher Bita Moghaddam of the University of Pittsburgh.

…Okay, this is getting confusing. First we didn’t want to make mistakes. Then we realized mistakes are great teachers since they provide us lessons we wouldn’t think to learn on purpose. And now The Atlantic reports that recent research suggests that mistakes are really hard to keep from repeating. So they’re not good. Again.

It has to do with neural pathways that get created as we do things. When we do something right, a pathway is created. Unfortunately, a pathway is also created when we something wrong. We basically build habits this way, both good and bad. So the reason we keep making the same mistakes is that we slip by default back into existing neural pathways.

It’s the same phenomenon that means you can only get somewhere by getting lost the same way you did last time, or that you keep putting things down in the same spot until they seem to be lost when in fact they’re just underneath the most recent thing you put down.

More significantly, this happens with bigger screwups, like being attracted to the wrong kind of person or other misguided decisions you habitually make. It seems our brains do learn from making mistakes: They learn how to make them.

So—and here’s where we contradict everything we thought we knew—it’s best not to try and learn from past mistakes because remembering them when we want a do-over encourages our brains to head back down the previous pathway. It’s better to think about what we want to accomplish and try to view it from a fresh angle that can lead us down a more successful road. That’s a neural pathway you’ll happily travel.

The term “fight or flight” is also known as the stress response. It’s what the body does as it prepares to confront or avoid danger. When appropriately invoked, the stress response helps us rise to many challenges. But trouble starts when this response is constantly provoked by less momentous, day-to-day events, such as money woes, traffic jams, job worries, or relationship problems.

Health problems are one result. A prime example is high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease. The stress response also suppresses the immune system, increasing susceptibility to colds and other illnesses. Moreover, the buildup of stress can contribute to anxiety and depression. We can’t avoid all sources of stress in our lives, nor would we want to. But we can develop healthier ways of responding to them. One way is to invoke the relaxation response, through a technique first developed in the 1970s at Harvard Medical School by cardiologist Dr. Herbert Benson. The relaxation response is a state of profound rest that can be elicited in many ways, including meditation, yoga, and progressive muscle relaxation.

Breath focus is a common feature of several techniques that evoke the relaxation response. The first step is learning to breathe deeply.

The benefits of deep breathing

For many of us, deep breathing seems unnatural. There are several reasons for this. For one, body image has a negative impact on respiration in our culture. A flat stomach is considered attractive, so women (and men) tend to hold in their stomach muscles. This interferes with deep breathing and gradually makes shallow “chest breathing” seem normal, which increases tension and anxiety.

Shallow breathing limits the diaphragm’s range of motion. The lowest part of the lungs doesn’t get a full share of oxygenated air. That can make you feel short of breath and anxious.

Deep abdominal breathing encourages full oxygen exchange — that is, the beneficial trade of incoming oxygen for outgoing carbon dioxide. Not surprisingly, it can slow the heartbeat and lower or stabilize blood pressure.

Deep breathing also goes by the names of diaphragmatic breathing, abdominal breathing, belly breathing, and paced respiration. When you breathe deeply, the air coming in through your nose fully fills your lungs, and the lower belly rises.

Effects of Pranayama on the Brain

Pranayama, or expansion of the prana or vital energy, occurs through the practices of the prana . This paper examines various pranayamas practices which contribute initially to changing the physiological state of the brain and are said to awaken prana in the realm of the chakras, or psychic centres, within the human body. A review of a medical examination of a yogic adept is included, which confirms the ability of pranayama to influence an indivdual’s brain activity. The conclusion is drawn that pranayama can significantly influence the physical, pranic, mental and psychic aspects of the human brain.

An ancient yoga textbook, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, offers this simple answer: “Breath is the key to ultimate emancipation.” The Upanishads, the Hindu sacred scriptures, likewise equate prana, in the form of breath, with the universal soul. When it is done properly and when a yoga practitioner is ready, pranayama, the yogic practice of regulating and channeling one’s breath, can provide a bridge between the individual self and the universal soul.When practised regularly, leads to pranayama or expansion of the vital energy.

B.K.S. Iyengar explains how the three stages of the breath in pranayama—inhalation (puraka), retention ( kumbhaka), and exhalation (rechaka)—can connect us to the universal soul. During our inhalation, we are inviting prana to come in. According to Iyengar, the individual self must then move out of the way in order to make room for the soul. Iyengar believes that through this process, we are able to generate energy, expansion, and awareness within.Without prana, the body and mind are dead.

Ways Your Brain Influences Your Emotions1 Your Memories Drive and Inform Your Emotions
It may seem like common sense: Recalling a negative memory can put you in a bad mood, and thinking about a happy memory can put you in a good mood. But there’s actually scientific evidence to back that up. Studies even show that this effect is taking place whether or not we’re aware of it.
So what’s the big deal? It turns out that memory recall can be used to regulate mood in people who are experiencing depression, because thinking about positive memories causes the brain to release dopamine. So when someone tells you to cheer up, it may be a simple matter of thinking happy thoughts [source: Gillihan].
Not surprisingly, memories of previous experiences influence how you respond emotionally to situations. If you once nearly drowned, you might experience fear around water. If a previous love had a wandering eye, you might feel jealousy when a current flame looks at another person. What’s more, the intensity of the previous experience affects the intensity of the current emotion. For example, a soldier who has had extensive combat experience or traumatic combat experience will likely have more intense anxiety later on.
Preconceived ideas also affect your emotions. Anticipation and your expectations, which are driven by memories of previous events, affect the intensity of an emotional reaction [source: Frijda].Memory and the Hippocampus
The main part of your brain associated with storing these emotion-affecting memories is the hippocampus — a small, seahorse-shaped part of the limbic system. If you were to damage your hippocampus, you wouldn’t be able to store any new memories, and you might even lose access to some of your old memories [source: BBC]. As a result, damage to the hippocampus can have a pretty big impact on your emotions and how you respond to the world around you [source: Michael-Titus].2 Your Brain’s Hemispheres Keep Your Emotions in Check
If you were to crack open your skull and take a look at the gray matter contained within it, you’d see that the brain appears to be divided into two equal-sized halves. These are your brain’s hemispheres and, while they work together to keep you functioning, they each take responsibility for processing different types of information. The left side of your brain thinks in concrete ways, such as the literal meaning of words and mathematical calculations, while the right side thinks in more abstract ways, such as symbolism and gestures [source: Gutman].
Because the two sides of your brain process information differently, they work together to keep your emotions in check. Here’s an easy way to explain it: The right hemisphere identifies, and the left hemisphere interprets. The right brain identifies negative emotions, like fear, anger or danger. It then alerts the left brain, which decides what to do by interpreting the situation and making a logical decision about how to act in response.
It’s a great system, unless something happens and one side of the brain can’t do its job. Without the left brain, the right brain would be overcome with negative emotions and not know how to respond to them. And without the right brain, the left brain would not be as good at identifying negative emotions [source: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke].When One Side of the Brain Takes Over
Scientists have actually seen firsthand what happens when the system of emotional balance provided by the brain’s hemispheres breaks down. They’ve found that people who have had brain damage in the left hemisphere of the brain are at a higher risk for suicide because they’re overwhelmed with negativity, while people who have had damage to the right hemisphere can be overly optimistic because they have trouble identifying negative emotions [source: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke].3 Different Parts of Your Brain Are Responsible for Different Emotions
Your brain is made up of many different parts that all work together to process the information it receives. The main part of the brain responsible for processing emotions, the limbic system, is sometimes called the “emotional brain” [source: Brodal].
Part of the limbic system, called the amygdala, assesses the emotional value of stimuli. It’s the main part of the brain associated with fear reactions — including the “fight or flight” response. A person who has a seizure in the temporal lobe (the location of the amygdala) sometimes reports an intense feeling of fear or danger [source: Fiori].
The part of the brain stretching from the ventral tegmental area in the middle of the brain to the nucleus accumbens at the front of the brain, for example, has a huge concentration of dopamine receptors that make you feel pleasure [source: Banich]. The hypothalamus is in charge of regulating how you respond to emotions. When excitement or fear causes your heart to beat faster, your blood pressure to rise and your breathing to quicken, it’s the hypothalamus doing its job. The hippocampus turns your short-term memory into long-term memory and also helps you retrieve stored memory [source: BBC]. Your memories inform how you respond to the world around you, including what your emotional responses are.
Because different parts of the brain process different emotions in different ways, injury to any part of the brain can potentially change your moods and emotions.The Limbic System: Afraid of Everything?
The limbic system was one of the first areas in the human brain to develop. Even though the brain has since evolved to have more complex functions, the function of the limbic system itself is still fairly primitive [source: Zillmer]. Its responses to stimuli are still simple and generalized. Because the limbic system regulates the emotions, your emotional responses are also often simple and generalized. For example, even though other parts of your brain can reason that only certain snakes are dangerous, the limbic system can’t differentiate among snakes, so you might respond with fear when you see any snake, whether or not it’s dangerous [source: Dozier].4 Brain Chemicals Dictate Your Mood
Your brain is a complex network that processes vast quantities of information every second. Part of the brain’s information-processing network includes neurons, or cells that transmit signals throughout the brain. Neurons send signals through neurotransmitters, which are chemicals some release and others receive. These chemicals essentially let the parts of the brain communicate with each other.
The three most commonly studied neurotransmitters are dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine. Dopamine is related to experiences of pleasure and the reward-learning process. In other words, when you do something good, you’re rewarded with dopamine and gain a pleasurable, happy feeling. This teaches your brain to want to do it again and again. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter associated with memory and learning. Researchers believe it plays a part in the regeneration of brain cells, which has been linked to easing depression. An imbalance in serotonin levels results in an increase in anger, anxiety, depression and panic [source: Nazario]. Norepinephrine helps moderate your mood by controlling stress and anxiety.
Abnormalities in how the brain receives and processes these chemicals can have a big effect on your emotions. For example, when you do something rewarding or pleasurable, the part of your brain that processes that information interacts with the chemical dopamine. If your brain can’t receive dopamine normally, the result is that you feel less happy — or even sad — after what should have been a happy experience. Studies of people with major depressive disorder (MDD) have shown that they have fewer serotonin receptors in their brains [source: National Institutes of Mental Health].Antidepressants and Your Brain
Because neurotransmitters have such an impact on your emotions, tweaking the amounts of certain brain chemicals can help relieve symptoms of depression. That’s how most antidepressants work — they change how much of a certain brain chemical your brain gets. Some do this by reducing the reuptake (re-absorption into the neuron it was released from) of serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine or a combination of these chemicals, which raises their levels in your brain and improves your mood [source: Mayo Clinic and Licinio].

5 .Your Brain Perceives and Acts Upon Emotional Stimuli
Even though we think of emotions as internal states, psychologists define emotions as a combination of cognitions, feelings and actions [source: Kalat]. This means what we think of as “emotions” includes not only how we feel, but also how we process and respond to those feelings.
To understand this, it’s helpful to consider the purpose of emotions. In 1872, Charles Darwin first published “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,” which established that emotions serve an important evolutionary purpose. In order for a species to continue, it needs to survive and pass on its genetic information. Emotions like fear serve to protect you from danger so you can survive to pass on your genes. The “fight-or-flight” response that primes your body to defend itself or run away from danger is also an emotional reaction. Emotions like love and lust give you the desire to reproduce.
For these reasons, the brain takes on the function of evaluating a stimulus — such as a dog that’s about to attack or a beautiful woman batting her eyelashes — and crafting an emotional response to it. The brain thinks in terms of how it can best respond to a situation in order to survive and reproduce, and it uses emotions as the catalyst to convince the rest of your body to act accordingly.Without Words for Emotions
Emotions serve an important function, but what if you were unable to identify yours? For some people, the inability to realize when they’re experiencing emotions is a reality. People with alexithymia (Greek for “without words for emotions”) have trouble identifying internal emotional states and describing their emotions to others. Alexithymia is caused by brain structure abnormalities, either present at birth or resulting from brain damage [source: Thompson].

Meditacion and Yoga
People are healthier and happier when they meditate. We will know how it is possible trough Meditation and Yoga.
Science has found Neurobiological evidence to support what meditation experts have been claiming for years. Brain scans show how meditation can actually change the size of key regions of our brain, improving our memory and making us more empathetic, compassionate, and resilient under stress
We can change our brain physically through Yoga and Meditation.
Neurobiological effects of meditation can be detected in the brain as functional and also structural alterations in grey and white matter, particularly in areas related to attention and memory, interception and sensory processing, or self- and auto-regulation (including control of stress and emotions). The home of our working memory and executive decision making is situated on the pre-frontal cortex. This is the place in which we discern if something is really a threat or if it just appears to be one.
The area of the brain that controls emotions, empathy and compassion actually grows in the brain when you practice yoga and meditate. The region of the brain connected to our feelings becomes bigger and there are more connections there. That is why meditators are more able to connect with the world around them, love everyone and are more able to find happiness.
Also the parts of the brain that respond the most to stress gets smaller with meditation. This means that anxiety and depression naturally fade with a meditation practice.
As we age, our brains loose grey matter. However, if you meditate by age 50 you will have the same amount of gray matter as a 25 year old. Meditation literally keeps your mind healthy and young!
Scientific evidence strongly supports meditation, and validated following benefits of Meditation Based Stress Reduction:
Decreases Stress, Reduces Symptoms Associated with: depression, anxiety, pain, gastrointestinal disorders, insomnia, psoriasis and eczema, Enhanced Ability to Pay Attention, Increase Quality of Life – people who meditate are simply happier.

Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity, it refers to changes in neural pathways and synapses due to changes in behavior, environment, neural processes, thinking, and emotions.

The Studies
1st study compared meditators and non-meditators and found that the pre-frontal cortex was thicker in those who had a regular daily meditation practice of 30-40 minutes.
2nd study examined a group of people before and after an 8-week MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) course and found that there was:
• an increase in grey matter in the left hippocampus – the area of learning, memory, emotional regulation
• a shrinking of the amygdala – our stress center, this is the place that lights up when we are terrified, angry, aroused
• a strengthening of the temporo-parietal junction – the home of empathy, compassion and perspective taking

Like this:

The mind
The mind is not the brain, the brain is the body and the mind is its functions. The mind is the brain function.
The definition of mind in the dictionary is: “The mind is the most common emergent phenomenon that is responsible for understanding, the ability to create thoughts, creativity, learning, reasoning, perception, emotion, memory, imagination, will, and other cognitive skills.”
The mind integrates various faculties of the brain that allow you to gather information, to reason and draw conclusions.
It has three types of processes: conscious, unconscious and procedural. It also covers non-intellectual functions, emotional functions.
The attributes that make up the mind still are debated. Some psychologists argue that only the “higher” intellectual functions constitute the mind, particularly reason and memory. In this view the emotions — love, hate, fear, joy — are more primitive or subjective in nature and should be seen as different from the mind as such. Others argue that various rational and emotional states cannot be separated like that, that they are of the same nature and origin, and should therefore be considered all part of it as the mind.
Understanding the relationship between the brain and the mind – mind–body problem is one of the central issues in the history of philosophy – is a challenging problem both philosophically and scientifically. There are three major philosophical schools of thought concerning the answer: dualism, materialism, and idealism. Dualism holds that the mind exists independently of the brain; materialism holds that mental phenomena are identical to neuronal phenomena; and idealism holds that only mental phenomena exist.
Through most of history many philosophers found it inconceivable that cognition could be implemented by a physical substance such as brain tissue (that is neurons and synapses). Descartes, who thought extensively about mind-brain relationships, found it possible to explain reflexes and other simple behaviors in mechanistic terms, although he did not believe that complex thought, and language in particular, could be explained by reference to the physical brain alone.
The most straightforward scientific evidence of a strong relationship between the physical brain matter and the mind is the impact physical alterations to the brain have on the mind, such as with traumatic brain injury and psychoactive drug use. Philosopher Patricia Churchland notes that this drug-mind interaction indicates an intimate connection between the brain and the mind.
In addition to the philosophical questions, the relationship between mind and brain involves a number of scientific questions, including understanding the relationship between mental activity and brain activity, the exact mechanisms by which drugs influence cognition, and the neural correlates of consciousness.

Share this:

Like this:

How the brain deceives us
Our brain decides how we perceive everything around us. It informs us about our decisions, it is carefully guiding us through the fog that is the world that is around us. Excepting the times it lies to us.
Our brain deceives us when we think about ourselves and try to remember anything. When we dream and when we perceive the reality around us, our brain seems to simulate, conceal or change things but has good reason to do so.
Our brain looks for our survival at all costs and sometimes to do so it is able to supply the missing information with fantasies and conspiracy. The important thing is that we do not lack information though part of it is not accurate, the important thing is that reality presents to us with a complete and coherent sense to believe that all of our behaviors are under control.
That our memory may be a reflection of what happened.
The real world is less important than the world we need. The objects we see hear and touch may be real, but what we experience as reality is an illusion constructed in the brain. Our memory is unreliable and does not work like a camera, sometimes for a coherent remembering the brain fills the gaps of memory with imaginary and unreal contents.
Sometimes unconsciously stored information rises to the surface and seems something wonderful and supernatural. Attitude, emotion and life experiences, all influence our memories.
The truth is that we live in a world constructed by our brains and our good, sometimes it shows us things that are not there and other times it hides things that are there. Your eyes can make you hear different words. Your brain deletes objects while you are driving. Your eyes can change the taste of food. Your brain resizes objects around you.
You can easily forget where your limbs are. Now we can have a clearer idea of how our brain conspires to protect us from reality sometimes uncomfortable or too hard. We must take the opportunity to be with us and the rest of the people more tolerant.
“Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs. I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs psas it on !!”

“Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs. I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs psas it on !!”

Share this:

Like this:

The Brain
To try to understand ourselves it is vital to have adequate knowledge of how our brain and mind works, and also to try to come closer to the understanding of consciousness.The brain is the control center of the body. Controls thoughts, memory, speech and movement. Regulates the function of many organs. When the brain is healthy, it works quickly and automatically. However, when problems occur, the results can be devastating.
The brain is the most complex part of the human body. This organ is the seat of intelligence, interpreter of the senses, initiator of body movement, and controller of behavior.Your brain is made up of 100 billion nerve cells.
The brain can be divided into three basic units: The forebrain (forebrain), mesencephalon (midbrain) and hindbrain (hindbrain)
The hindbrain includes the upper part of the spinal cord, the brain stem, and a wrinkled ball of tissue called the cerebellum . The hindbrain controls the body’s vital functions such as respiration and heart rate. The cerebellum coordinates movement and is involved in learned rote movements. When you hit a tennis ball you are activating the cerebellum. The uppermost part of the brainstem is the midbrain, which controls some reflex actions and is part of the circuit involved in the control of eye movements and other voluntary movements. The forebrain is the largest and most highly developed part of the human brain: it consists primarily of the cerebrum and the structures hidden beneath it.
The cerebrum sits at the topmost part of the brain and is the source of intellectual activities. It holds your memories, allows you to plan, enables you to imagine and think. It allows you to recognize friends, read books, and play games.
The cerebrum is split into two halves (hemispheres) by a deep fissure. Despite the split, the two cerebral hemispheres communicate with each other through a thick tract of nerve fibers that lies at the base of this fissure. Although the two hemispheres seem to be mirror images of each other, they are different. For instance, the ability to form words seems to lie primarily in the left hemisphere, while the right hemisphere seems to control many abstract reasoning skills.
The right cerebral hemisphere primarily controls the left side of the body and the left hemisphere primarily controls the right side. When one side of the brain is damaged, the opposite side of the body is affected. There also are diseases that affect the brain as;